"The first purpose of a garden is to be a place of quiet beauty such as will give delight to the eye and repose and refreshment to the mind."
Gertrude Jekyll, A Gardener's Testament.

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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Anyone with a prostate should eat brassicas three times a week

Thursday last week picked the first of the broad beans, snappy and full with their promise of buttery goodness. "The Sutton" is such a good old workhorse of a bean, it really isn't any wonder its been a favourite for decades. I picked a bucketful during the morning, and after boiling up some Jersey Royals threw the podded beans into the water, brought back to the boil and immediately drained, before serving up with parlsey sauce and a thick slice of best British gammon.

Good God but the British know how to eat.

Parsley sauce - make a simple roux (lightly toast off the flour in the oven for 10 mins first to cook out the floury-ness), using unsalted butter and farine de blé; add half a pint of milk, lots of salt and black pepper, then once thickening nicely throw in a very large bunch of finely chopped parsley leaves.

Ful medames - drop some broad beans into a pan of boiling water and return to boil then immediately drain (clearly this can really only be done with spanking fresh, very young beans), then tip into a bowl. Add some olive oil to the beans, together with about a teaspoon of cumin seeds and nicely sliced garlic cloves, about two. Zip up by squeezing a lemon's juice over, and season as if your life depended upon it. Mix together gently with your hands. You can add a roughly chopped bit of parsley, unless you have someone sexy coming to lunch, and you intend to be smiling at them a lot...

Lazy slut's supper - Boil up some new potatoes, and when ready drain and eat hot from pan, cutting them almost in half in your hand with a knife holding a slick of unsalted butter so that the butter cuts into the potato as you slice it. Dip into Maldon sea salt as you go.

Lazy slut on a diet's supper - as above, but leave out the salt, in which case it's hardly worth bothering to eat the potatoes in the first place.